Weltmeisterschaft 2010 am Badestrand!

I know I am quit behind on posts in my blog, but I thought I’d write an update about my current social life in Berlin.

As we all know, the World Cup is taking place right now and, of course, Europe is probably the best place to see it because these people actually care about football (unlike Americans). I have never closely followed football (and this is probably due to the fact that not many people in the U.S. follow it), but I really enjoy watching the games here.

The people here are absolutely wild about football. I would say the Germans get more riled about Germany playing just their first game in the World cup than Americans get when their favourite American football team wins the Super Bowl. For example, when I just got off my U-bahn stop on Sunday, June 13, I thought I had stepped into a war zone when I live in the quiet, suburban-like area of Rudow. But really, the Germans were merely setting off their fireworks and making loud noises because Germany had scored a goal in its first game of the 2010 World Cup.

One thing in Berlin that is popular is beach bars. There are several bars put in the setting of a nice, sandy beach and even have palm trees and several beach volleyball nets/courts. A group of younger employees (NOT interns!) at Deutsche Bahn have been playing beach volleyball every Wednesday at a beach bar called BeachMitte. I’ve already played twice with them and this past week our beach volleyball night coincided with a Germany World Cup game! So after we played, we watched the game at BeachMitte.

Watching the game at BeachMitte. This is Mesut Özil of Germany after Germany had won the game against Ghana!

Those are the volleyball nets. We had finished playing and were watching the game. On the left is Katja and on the right is Kati. They both work for DB Schenker, but Kati is the only one who actually works in my direct group.

Marvin and Marco from DB

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